Weird Food
There's this guy on Youtube, he puts random stuff on his coffee before pulling an espresso shot. Peach ring candy, Nerd candies, M&Ms... Well, it's all candies...
This guy is doing something arbitrarily, unequivocally morally wrong. He's committing a transgression of the highest order. Certainly divine judgment will befall him, and you just KNOW he will receive retribution at some point...
Yet, I think he's onto something. We've been conditioned to the "right" way of doing things. When my kid wants to put chocolate on his mashed potatoes, I say no. Why? Because, you don't do that! That's all!
But what if we DID do that, and it was amazing? What if, instead of satisfying The Expectations™ we went for weird? I honestly have no idea of if chocolate + potatoes is good. What if it was truly phenomenal? I'm sure there's other unexpected combos that are delicious.
There's this experiment about a group of monkeys in a room with a ladder (apparently the story is a myth/exaggeration. Whatever, the idea still holds!). On top of the ladder is a banana. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, it gets sprayed/shocked. Soon the monkeys learn that they can't get to the banana.
One by one, researchers would replace the monkeys in the room. New monkeys, unaware of the trap, would try and get themselves a bit of fruity goodness, only to be deterred by their roommates. The group would react violently to someone doing something others know is wrong.
After new arrivals understand the rule, they abide. Even if they never actually tried to get the banana themselves, they know from how the group behaves and from seeing others punished that the banana is not up for grabs. Even after none of the original monkeys is left in the room and researchers disable the trap, the banana is left alone.
As a society, we thrive on order, on predictability, on "good neighborship". Obviously, that's often useful. Social order IS nice. We respect each other, make sure not to disturb, harass or offend.
But I think we need to reconsider the boundaries of this order and allow ourselves a bit more slack. Leave room for curiosity, experimentation, quirkiness, fun. Sure, by playing within the lines you won't offend anyone, but you won't discover anything extraordinary.
Honey wasn't discovered by avoiding bees. Someone probably saw bees going back to their hive and was like "These tiny weirdos are too chill with their buzzing and flowers. They must be hiding something" and stuck his hand up their home. The rest is history.
Weird isn't bad, it's just out of distribution. But sometimes in those outliers, you can find most interesting data points. Experiment! Try something outside of preconceived ideas someone else imprinted onto you. Worst case your kid's mashed potatoes are disgusting (but you'll have a good laugh), best case you might discover something amazing!
Extra thought:
First-hand knowledge is something we're getting worse and worse at. Anything you want to do there's a tutorial online. Any topic there's an opinion published somewhere you can take. Preconceived ideas are useful, functionally, to accomplish things on the first try. Now that we have Internet and ChatGPT, we don't have to experiment to get it right on the first try.
But there's a big difference between presuming and knowing. And with how bad we're getting at critical thinking, how much the internet is getting riddled with false, semi-truths, I think there's big value in KNOWING over surmising things.
